Phenom People, Ambler job-software firm, is hiring 200 after raising $22M

Phenom People, an Ambler hiring-software company that counts Aramark, Ford, Microsoft and dozens of other large companies as clients, says it has raised $22 million from New York-based AXA Venture Partners and previous  investors Sierra Ventures and Omidyar Ventures, based in California, and Sigma Prime Ventures, of Boston.

The investment will help Phenom People boost its staff to 500, from around 300 currently. The current headcount includes around 80 at the Ambler headquarters, 15 at a Tel Aviv, Israel software-development center, and more than 200 at the company's main technology center in Hyderabad, India.

Phenom People sells the Talent Relationship Marketing (TRM) software platform to manage hiring campaigns, job candidates and their information, appointments and conversations. The company is also developing a job referral application. Phenom People " has built a market-leading technology platform that enables companies to win the war for talent," said AXA general partner Alex Scherbakovsky in a statement.

"We plan to use the money raised to expand our product offering and increase our marketing and sales presence in Europe," spokesman Justin Noll told me. "Most of our customers are headquartered in the U.S., because that's where we had focused our sales and marketing efforts for the past few years. Last year we started growing a team in the U.K. and plan to open an office there and in other countries with the money raised."

Sierra, Omidyar and Sigma Prime invested another $9 million in 2015. Earlier Phenom People investors from a 2013 "seed round" included Philadelphia-area firms such as Karlani Capital, Kenexa founder Rudy Karsan, and marketing mogul Richard Vague's Gabriel Investments, reports Technical.ly's Roberto Torres.

Phenom People is run by the three men who founded the company in 2011: CEO Mahe Bayereddi, of Warrington, an India native with a computer-science master's from Maharishi University; his brother, CIO Hari Bayereddy (yes they spell their name differently), an India-trained engineer with a Temple Fox School MBA; and "chief people officer" Brad Goldoor, a former executive at newspaper publisher Gannett Corp. and help-wanted ad sales site CareerBuilder.com.

"They Bayireddi brothers are as determined as anybody we've ever invested in," Vague told me. "They are incredibly tenacious and motivated."